State Department Rapped for Grainting Visa to PLO Official

Two major Jewish organizations sharply criticized the State Department for granting a visa to Shafik Al Hout, a top official of the Palestine Liberation Organization to tour the United States for three weeks to promote PLO ideas at several university campuses.

Maxwell Greenberg, chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said that the State Department’s decision, which followed only days after PLO chief Yasir Arafat vowed to “chop off” the hands of President Carter, Premier Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar. Sadat of Egypt for having concluded the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, “can only lead the PLO to conclude that extremist threats and perhaps even violence pay dividends.”

Phil Boum, associate director of the American Jewish Congress, termed the State Department’s action a “clumsy act” which “can only confuse and undermine” the “sense of security in the objectivity and impartiality of the U.S.” He added that the act. “cannot but help burden the peace process and endanger the successful working out of relations” between Israel and Egypt. Boum noted that the Department’s act “must be viewed as a serious erosion in the announced U.S. position not to acknowledge or deal with the PLO in any form.”

Al Hout was granted a visa, cleared by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, on the grounds that under the McGovern Amendment visas will not be withheld unless the United States government can prove that the individual constitutes a threat to the U.S. The State Department explained that it was granting Al Hout a visa because he belongs to an element in the PLO that allegedly opposes terror.